Manage and delete contacts on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Learn how to set up and manage your contacts to change what shows up in the Contacts app, delete contacts, and more.

Set up your contacts account

You can set up your email accounts to share contacts with the Contacts app. If you have a contacts account, like a business or school directory, you can set that up too. Here's how:

Go to Settings > Passwords & Accounts.

Tap Add Account.

Tap your email account and turn on Contacts. Or tap Other to set up a contacts account, like an LDAP or CardDAV account.

Enter your information and password.

Tap Next.

If you have multiple accounts set up in the Contacts app and want to see contacts for a specific one, open Contacts and tap Groups in the upper-left corner.

Turn Contacts on or off for an account

Want to add or remove all of the contacts from an account that you already set up? Just turn Contacts on or off for that account:

Go to Settings > Passwords & Accounts.

Tap the account that has contacts that you want to add or remove.

To add contacts, turn on Contacts. To remove contacts, turn off Contacts, then tap Delete from My iPhone.

Choose a default account to add new contacts

If you set up multiple accounts in the Contacts app, you can choose a default account to add new contacts to. Just go to Settings > Contacts > Default Account and choose an account.

Change how you sort and display contacts

You can choose how to sort your contacts, like alphabetically by first or last name. Just go to Settings > Contacts and choose from the following:

Sort Order: Sort your contacts alphabetically by first or last name.

Display Order: Show contacts' first names before or after last names.

Short Name: Choose how your contact's name appears in apps like Mail, Messages, Phone, and more.

Delete a contact

When you delete a contact, it permanently deletes it from your device. And if you delete a contact from your email account, you also permanently delete the contact from all devices signed into that email account.

Here's how to delete a contact:

Open Contacts and tap the contact that you want to delete.

Tap Edit.

Scroll Down and tap Delete Contact then tap Delete Contact again to confirm.